“Hurraar!  Brrrraaah!  Brrrrrrp!” roared the steam through the foghorn, till the decks quivered.  “Don’t be frightened below.  It’s only me, just throwing out a few words in case any one happens to be rolling round to-night,”

“You don’t mean to say there’s any one except us on the sea in such weather?” said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.

“Scores of ’em,” said the steam, clearing its throat.  “Rrrrrraaa!  Brraaaaa!  Prrrrp!  It’s a trifle windy up here; and, great boilers, how it rains!”

“We’re drowning,” said the scuppers.  They had been doing nothing else all night, but this steady thresh of rain above them seemed to be the end of the world.

“That’s all right.  We’ll be easier in an hour or two.  First the wind and then the rain; soon you may make sail again!  Grrraaaaah!  Drrrraaaa!  Drrrrrp!  I have a notion that the sea is going down already.  If it does you’ll learn something about rolling.  We’ve only pitched till now.  By the way, aren’t you chaps in the hold a little easier than you were?”

There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave a supple little waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf club.

“We have made a most amazing discovery,” said the stringers, one after another; “a discovery that entirely changes the situation.  We have found, for the first time in the history of shipbuilding, that the inward pull of the deck beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of marine architecture.”

The steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the foghorn.  “What massive intellects you great stringers have!” he said, softly, when he had finished.

“We, also,” began the deck beams, “are discoverers and geniuses.  We are of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially helps us.  We find that we lock upon them when we are subjected to a heavy and singular weight of sea above.”

Here the “Dimbula” shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side, and righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.

“In these cases—­are you aware of this, steam?—­the plating at the bows, and particularly at the stern,—­we would also mention the floors beneath us,—­helps us to resist any tendency to spring.”  It was the frames who were speaking in the solemn and awed voice which people use when they have just come across something entirely new for the very first time.

“I’m only a poor, puffy little flutterer,” said the steam, “but I have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business.  It’s all tremendously interesting.  Tell us some more.  You fellows are so strong.”